9 bodies found outside Kyiv, some bearing ‘signs of torture’
President Vladimir Putin on Thursday hailed Russia’s “liberation” of Mariupol after Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told him Moscow controlled the Ukrainian port city apart from the giant Azovstal steel plant.
Taking full control of Mariupol on the Azov Sea would be a major strategic victory for Russia, helping it to connect annexed Crimea to the territories of pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
“Mariupol has been liberated,” Shoigu told Putin during a televised meeting. “The remaining nationalist formations took refuge in the industrial zone of the Azovstal plant.”
Shoigu said around 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers remained inside the plant, where the last pocket of Ukrainian resistance has been sheltering, using the facility’s network of underground tunnels.
Putin said the “liberation” of Mariupol was a “success” for Russian forces, but ordered Shoigu to call off the planned storming of the Azovstal industrial area, dismissing it as “impractical.”
“There is no need to climb into these catacombs and crawl underground through these industrial facilities. Block off this industrial area so that not even a fly can escape,” Putin said.
Thousands of civilians are believed to have died in the city, which was besieged by Russian troops for over a month, with little access to food, water and with no electricity.
Four buses carrying evacuees from Mariupol have left the besieged and destroyed port city.
“Four evacuation buses managed to leave the city yesterday through the humanitarian corridor,” Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on social media, adding that evacuations of women, children and the elderly would continue Thursday.
“The security situation is difficult. Things may change,” she added.
The battle for Mariupol appears to be nearing a tipping point after nearly two months of devastating fighting that has seen untold numbers of civilians trapped and killed.
Control of Mariupol and the separatist-controlled eastern Donbas region would allow Moscow to complete a southern corridor to the Crimean Peninsula that it annexed in 2014, depriving Ukraine of much of its coastline.
On Wednesday, senior Ukraine negotiator and presidential aide Mykhaylo Podolyak proposed a “special round” of negotiations in the city to “save our guys.”
Meanwhile, the bodies of nine civilians, some showing signs of torture, have been found in the town of Borodyanka outside the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, a senior police official said.
“These people were killed by the occupiers and some show signs of torture. I want to emphasize that these people were civilians. The Russian military knowingly shot civilians who did not put up any resistance,” the head of the police in the Kyiv region said overnight Wednesday to Thursday.